


be a burning star if it take all night

by Acoustic_Century



Series: just remember you will always burn as bright [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Batfamily (DCU), Blood, Escape, Gen, Happy Ending, Human Trafficking, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Injury, Meta Human AU, Mute Cassandra Cain, Telepathy, Trust Issues, no beta we die like jason todd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23147296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acoustic_Century/pseuds/Acoustic_Century
Summary: look getting stolen and stuck in a meta trafficking ring was not on Tim's to-do list. but things could be worse.AKA.Jason gets in fights and adopts Steph.Tim is kinda awkwardSteph punches a door
Relationships: Stephanie Brown & Jason Todd
Series: just remember you will always burn as bright [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1680928
Kudos: 62





	1. throw me to the wolves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the fic title is from Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back by My Chemical Romance   
> and the chapter title is from Throne by Bring Me The Horizon

Now normally when Tim wakes up, he doesn’t wake up in a cell, lying on the cold hard ground. Strange, he didn’t remember breaking the law recently.

Before he even opened his eyes, he could feel the headache coming.

The human ball of energy didn’t help.

“Oh, great your awake,” she has a bubbly voice, tired, yet playful dark blue eyes, and wavy blonde hair messily pulled back, held up with a strip of cloth. She had scars, one on the side of her face, just on her cheek, and small others on her arms, and legs, some white and closed over, others red violent and painful.

He stood up, carefully, ignoring the dizzy feeling and pain running through his head.

“Who… where am I?”

A sympathetic smile fell upon her face.

“I hate to tell you this but…” the voice was quieter… sweeter than before but laced with carful pity.

He silently asked her to go on.

“This is where you go before you get brainwashed and sold,”

“but why?... why would anyone want to buy me?”

Her eyebrows knit with worry.

“You’re a meta,”

No, he couldn’t be a meta, he hadn’t been tested but how likely is it that he would have powers. He stared blankly at her; eyes wide.

“No, but I, I can’t be, I would have known… wouldn’t I?”

“I’m so sorry but the trafficking ring has their sources, and… they’ve never been wrong,”

He grabbed the wall to keep himself steady, untrusting of his legs to hold him.

The girl grabbed his arm and lead him over to the bottom bunk of the bed and told him to sit down. Her eyes glazed over to his neck and momentarily widened with shock. He looked over at her neck seeing a metal collar rested around it, a red light, shining in his eyes as he looked into it.

“What are they?”

She takes a shaky breath as she carefully whispers.

“Inhibitor collars, they block your powers, and shock you when you need to be ‘disciplined’”

…

A loud bang on the door of the cell cuts through the thick silence left in the atmosphere of the room.

“Finally, I’m fucking starving,”

The switch shocked Tim, one second she seemed really quiet and sad, now she was just as bubbly as she was when he first met her.

“The names Stephanie, by the way,” she held out her hand to shake and Tim gladly took it.

“Tim,”

She nodded and rushed down the hall to get some food.

When Tim got to the dining hall, there were about a dozen tables all holding about six kids and teens on them, towards the back of the hall in the back corner was Stephanie on a table with one other guy. The tables themselves were fold out, and probably hadn’t been cleaned… ever. Chairs looked older than the dinosaurs and cheaper than chips and he was surprised that none of them had broken in the fifteen seconds Tim had spent in this room.

He slowly made his way towards the back of the room. Trying to avoid eye contact from, well everyone.

The kids all looked tired and didn’t seem as if they would give Tim any trouble, but he didn’t risk it, keeping to the wall and trying not to bother anyone.

Most the kids Tim passed had melancholy expressions glued to their faces, inhibitor collars strapped around their necks, some older kids gave hopeless smiles as Tim’s eyes glanced over them.

Eventually he got to the back of the room, where Stephanie was giving a loud recount of some funny thing she did before she got stuck here.

As soon as Tim sat down the other boy glared at him.

“Jay relax, this is Tim, he’s my… roommate,”

‘Jay’ scowled at Tim and with a sour face snarled.

“What can you do?”

“Jason!” Stephanie snapped. Quite enough that none of the other tables would realize but loud enough to get the point across.

“I- uh -um…” Tim stuttered.

“He doesn’t know,” she whispered it in the calm sympathetic voice from before, it made Tim feel slightly safer in this mess hall full of stolen children.

Jason looked Tim up and down inspecting him as if he were a buyer (better get used to that feeling then).

“No collar,”

Tim shook his head, not trusting his voice not to shake.

He exchanged a look with Steph that Tim couldn’t quite place, leaving him feeling uncertain, and curious.

“If we can figure out your power before they do, then we could use it to escape,”

Escape. The word echoed through Tim’s mind, like the ripples from a pond. Tim had been stuck here for, what? An hour, less? And he already hated, it. He hated the sad looks on the kids, he loathed the scars littering Jason and Stephanie’s skin.

Tim didn’t know what to say. He wanted to help these people, he needed to didn’t he. He had a power and was the only one who could actually use one… Tim was their only hope and he was going to save them.

“Where do we start,” it was the most confident and sure of himself that he’s sounded all day… possibly ever.

A grin cracked through Jason’s, threatening stare, and Stephanie beamed at Tim.

Before any of them could start planning their escape. Some asshole from the table next to them slammed a fist down on theirs. He stared into Tim’s eyes and Tim stared back into the cold unforgiving windows into a torturers’ soul. His smile could only be described as way to similar to the [sharks](https://www.google.com/search?q=sharks+finding+nemo&safe=strict&rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBAU819AU819&sxsrf=ALeKk00PeTebvU_6h8mCJFOovld5JSkdWw:1584223110822&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-yo_--proAhWfxTgGHRo-BY8Q_AUoAXoECA8QAw#imgrc=x73KHbqeZurQ1M) from finding nemo.

“New blood,” he inspected Tim, in the same way Jason did when they first met. “and no collar, this will be fun,”

“Leave him alone Dean!” her sweet voice gone, leaving Stephanie with a threatening tone, reminding Tim of broken glass grinding on concrete. It was honestly scary, the sense of protectiveness and courage filling each word gave Tim the feeling Steph would be a hero weather she had a meta ability or not,

Dean grabbed Tim’s shoulder and pulled him towards him.

Tim pushed Deans hand away and tried to get further away from him.

Dean grabbed Tim’s arm with complete disregard for Tim’s arm’s wellbeing.

Tim’s heartbeat quickened and breathing went ragged and irregular, Steph seemed to be yelling at Dean, but Tim couldn’t hear. The only noise filling his ears was the quick rhythmic beat of his heart.

_Thwack._

As some point Jason stood up, and slammed his fist into Deans face, blood dripping down his nose and down his chin, wide eyed expression stuck on his face.

Jason didn’t give him the satisfaction of sticking around, soon he was at Tim side.

“You okay kid?” with the hostile tone and scowl gone, Jason seemed like a pretty nice guy… a ‘nice’ guy who will punch someone in the face, but a nice guy none the less.

Tim steadied his breathing with a shaky breath, and slowly nodded.

Dean didn’t back down from a fight, no matter how many times he lost, and no matted how low his chances of winning were.

He grabbed Jason’s shoulder, pulling Jason towards him and swinging his other arm around for a punch. Jason anticipated the move and ducked, and aimed a jab at Deans stomach, then used the distraction to throw a hard blow at Deans jaw knocking him out cold.

At some point during the fight, one of the guards noticed the fight going on and decided to wait for it to finish, before getting them in trouble.

“Alright Todd… you know the drill, two nights in solitary.” The guards grabbed Jason’s arm and dragged him off, before getting to far he turned and said,

“And can one of you boys please take Mr. Adler to his cell,”

Two of Deans lackeys haphazardly grabbed his arms and legs and recklessly carried him through the entrance Tim came in through.

“Does this happen all the time,”

“What? Dean threaten some kid and Jason stand up for them, getting in a fight with Dean and eventually getting thrown into solitary for another two days just for it to happen again,” the words heavily laced with a thick layer of sarcasm.

Tim ate his food in silence while Stephanie, told a rather detailed story of the time Jason got in a prank war against the guards.

Once they finished their food, Tim and Steph, made their way back to their cell.

The metal door slammed closed, as Stephanie turned towards Tim.

“Okay so, we have about one night to teach you how to use your meta ability, control it and what it actually is. You ready?”

“No,”

“Well we don’t really have any options now do we…” she muttered the words just loud enough for Tim to hear, no anger in the words, just frustration. “ok what’s the last thing you remember before getting…taken,”

He didn’t really remember much of the day he was taken, it was probably just his usual day, parents out of town so he’d go out to take photos.

“I don’t really remember… how’d you find out about yours?”

Steph looked down at the floor. She hung her head in shame.

“you don’t have to tell me… if you don’t want…”

“Nah… I’ll… I mean, we could die tomorrow, may as well tell someone…”

She took a moment to gather some non existent strength, and took a deep breath

“one second I was… talking to my dad and the next second there was this bubble or something, and it was hurting him… that’s my meta ability, Effect field projection… that’s the ‘official’ name anyway, second he realized it was me… well I was here, he was a couple thousand dollars richer,”

There is was again, the tone of voice, the way she spoke about her dad, it was the same way she talked to Dean.

“Anyway,” she said, switching back to the bubbly voice that she had before “you could always just hold you hand out in a superhero pose and see is anything happens,”

Tim awkwardly held his hand out not really feeling superhero like.

“Okay, now go,”

“I’m trying,”

After about three minutes Tim’s arm was getting sore and absolutely nothing was happening.

“This isn’t working,”

“Well you could always just think really hard about making the ground shake,”

Tim’s face morphed into a confused expression.

“Jason says that’s how he uses his,”

“Look maybe I’m just a mistake, maybe I shouldn’t be here,” he tried to keep his voice quiet as not to disturb anyone but couldn’t help slamming his hand down on the metal frame of the bed Stephanie was sitting on.

Steph yelped and jumped up off the bed.

“Sorry, I just got… shocked,” she stared at Tim’s hands, blue lightning crackling across his finger “Well that’s convenient,”

She stood mesmerized by the electricity.

“Do you think… you could, um,” she pointed at the collar around her neck.

“Oh yeah, sure,” he felt like an idiot… couldn’t have done that earlier

She turned around and lifted her hair up pushing it over her shoulder, showing the control panel.

Tim placed a finger on the small keypad. He felt the lightning running through his veins he carefully willed the electricity passed his fingertip and, in the collar, short circuiting the motherboard (look I don’t know shit about this kinda stuff so just pretend that that’s actually how it works ).

The collar powered down but didn’t unclip itself from around steph’s throat.

Almost instantly a purple bubble appeared around Stephanie’s fist she focused on it for a second getting used to not having her powers supressed. She then grabbed the collar and broke it with one hand, dropping the smashed pieces on the ground.

She screwed her eyes shut and shook her head a little before walking up to the door, and punching it as hard as she could, only conjuring the bubble at the last moments. A hole appeared in the door right where she punched it.

The door swung open with a too loud for comfort creak.

She took a deep breath.

“The door to solitary is electric… do you think you can…?” Tim nodded towards her as she massaged her fist, watching a red mark appear from the pressure of forcing it against the solid metal door.

“We should probably go now,” she didn’t seem ready to go, but Tim didn’t think she’d appreciate his concern after only knowing her for about 6 hours.

Steph started walking down the hallway. Way too ready for a fight.

It took barely five minutes to make it to cell that Jason was in. There were no guards outside the cell, or anywhere in the halls which was just bad planning, but seeing as that was working in his favour Tim decided not to complain.

Tim placed his hand against the keypad and this time instead of thinking about short circuiting the wires (still don’t know electricity things).

The door slid open showing, Jason, already ready for a fight.

“How did you?...”

Stephanie pointed at Tim.

“Electricity manipulation,”

“Knew you were good for something kid,”

Tim awkwardly smiled, unsure if he should take that as a complement or not.

“Can you do something about this,” he pointed to the collar and swiftly disabled it.

Jason placed two fingers on the metal band, and in a matter of seconds, the collar, burst outwards like some kind of explosive, narrowly (and probably intentionally) missing Stephanie and Tim.

“We should go before someone notices we’re gone,”

The three ran through the halls.

Steph stopped.

“This way,” she pointed down a hallway leading to a single door, still no guards.

Steph ran towards the door with a new burst of energy.

Tim stepped through the doorway Jason following behind. The room was filled with cardboard boxes, Steph was rushing around obviously looking for a specific one. Tim read one of the labels. _Chris Owen._

_Thump_

Tim’s head snapped towards the noise. Steph was sitting on the ground next to one of the boxes she’d thrown down. She pried open the duct taped shut lid, and inspected the contents. She pulled out a worn, black, leather jacket, a backpack and a file, she put on the jacket and placed the file in her bag.

Tim looked around and noticed Jason wasn’t around. He’d probably gone to find his stuff.

Tim looked around at the shelves, noticing all small details about some of the boxes, how some of them had thick layers of dust covering the lids, untouched and fragile, while others lay on their side pushed to the back to make room for more boxes.

If every box was for one child, they’d bought, or stolen… well there had to be at least 200 boxes in here.

His wondering came to an stop as he came towards the end of the room, where the boxes had little to no dust and the cardboard looked a little fresher and newer than the other end.

_Tim Drake._

Carefully he slid the box out from the shelf and put it on the ground. In it there was his wallet and hoodie he was wearing the day he was stolen.

He put the hoodie on and put his wallet in his pocket.

He noticed Jason with a brown leather jacket, a baseball bat in one hand keys in the other and a motorcycle helmet on his head.

“Got everything?” he seemed to only be talking to Steph, but it didn’t bother Tim too much. They’d known each other for a while before Tim came so it made sense.

“Oh, um yeah, let’s go!”

One by one they returned to the hallway they just left.

Things were going well… until they weren’t.

Things started going downhill, when they ran into a fuckton of guards.

You see they had this guard meeting, and literally all the guards were there or some shit, and that’s why they didn’t see anyone while running through the halls.

You see the meeting ended and they all left, they turn the corner and what do they see? Three kids, no older than 16, with no collars, no clue how the fuck they left.

The guards stood in shock for a second. Stephanie took this moment to create a sensory field, it was the only field that Stephanie was actually good at conjuring, the trafficking ring seemed to deem that more important than teaching her to kill which she was grateful for.

For a split second she could the feel her control of the field leaving her. It was expanding too quickly and starting to surround Jason and Tim. She hands balled into tight fists. The field quickly got smaller until the only ones inside were the guards who had gotten over their shock and were starting to attack.

_No powers._

She didn’t really know how the field really worked, she knew that only she could see this type of field, just like only she could feel that none of the guards had any powers. She dropped the field just as quickly as she put it up. She suddenly felt uncomfortable, like the power was just begging to get out after being trapped for years. She just wanted to scream and make a death field so big that it engulfed the whole world.

“They don’t have powers, just guns,” she whispered to Jason and Tim.

“Good, no one to block me from doing this,” a chaotic grin filled Jason’s face.

He gripped his baseball bat tight and swung it around slamming it into the ground, Steph smiled to herself, she always loved watching Jason use his power, it was trippy to see the ripples spreading from the baseball bat moving a concussive force through the ground and up the walls but only hitting the guards. The ripples moved like tsunami’s quick, and relentless, throwing the guards back, a few hitting the wall and passing out, others just got up and ran at the kids.

The desperation to create a field was too overpowering, she focused all her energy on an augmentation field around her, she saw the familiar purple bubble encasing her.

She could hear her own blood rushing… the perfect soundtrack for chaos.

She ran at the guards they swung their fists at her she did the same, using her enhanced strength to knock them out. But as many as she fought, more came. To either side of her Tim and Jason were busy Tim shocking people who got too close and occasionally touching one of the guards and electrocuting them and Jason hitting the guards with a vibration enhanced baseball bat, and occasionally causing random things like their guns to explode.

Guns.

They had guns, she had said that right, why wasn’t she shot?

That didn’t matter. As she took a second to breathe, moving away from the guards and letting them come to her. She dropped her augmentation field and pulled a bad luck field over a few of the guards watching as the tripped over each other, and their hats fall over their eyes. Probably the most fun she’d had while in a fight.

One of the guards seemed, unaffected simply walking through the mess of their colleagues, and pointed a gun at Steph.

The bad luck field fell, everything went silent, she could no longer hear the roar of the blood in her ears, or the crackling of Tim’s electricity, the dull echoes of Jason’s dampened vibration attacks, all she could hear was her heartbeat.

It was like slow motion, the spark of light on the end of the barrel of the gun, and the bullet traveling from it right into her stomach.

The panicked feeling, causing everything to go silent, stopped.

The noise came rushing back to her in one painful wave.

She lost control.

And then… nothing.

When consciousness returned to her she was lying on a bed in an old, dusty, run-down apartment, her stomach, where she was shot, bandaged and there were two people she didn’t recognize.

She didn’t care that she was shot…

They escaped with their lives.

She was free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so I'm basing the powers off the fandom pages for them, I'm not writing them exactly the same but there are a lot of similarities.  
> if you want some links here they are  
> Jason - https://powerlisting.fandom.com/wiki/Vibration_Manipulation  
> Tim - https://powerlisting.fandom.com/wiki/Electricity_Manipulation  
> Steph - https://powerlisting.fandom.com/wiki/Effect_Field_Projection


	2. tomorrow i will come back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> man, who even needs a real estate agent

Jason had trust issues. It wasn’t really hard for him to admit that, he’d been screwed over a lot already. His dad well let’s just say he was an asshole. Him mom sold him for drug money. Every friend he’d ever had was more likely to turn him into the cops, even tell him their real names. The only person Jason trusted, was Stephanie. They both bonded over their traumatic childhood’s on the streets of Gotham. While Stephanie took more of an optimist approach at life Jason preferred to look at things the way they were. They’d both been screwed over by life what made tomorrow any different.

Three years. He spent three years stuck in a human trafficking ring, being trained, to be brainwashed and sold. He was forced to suppress his powers. Something that was literally a part of who he is. Something his was born with… removing it was like cutting his arm off.

What was both the best and worst day of his life was the day a little genius called Tim entered his life. Okay, all Tim really did was open like one door and take off their collars. But the second his powers returned to him, he finally felt whole. While in the trafficking ring trained him control his powers, but that wasn’t the same, then, he still had the collar on. They were still controlling him. But now he had a taste of freedom, of balance, of control over his own fucking life, he was never letting go… not till he was cold and dead.

The thing about have a collar on for three years was that, he hadn’t used his full power for years… possibly ever. Now he could use his power when ever he wanted… he didn’t know what to do, all he felt was something burning inside him, a constant scream, just to use them, to prove he still had them or just because he had three years of catching up to do.

The day Jason met Tim was both the best and worst day of his life. He was free. But what was the point of freedom if the cost was your only friend in the world. They used to spend hours, making escape plans, and dreaming about how they would survive without anyone but themselves. He remembers that day in so much detail, it still give’s him chills thinking about it.

The bang of a gun brought the whole room to silence.

The guards stopped attacking and so did Tim and Jason. They looked around to the source of the noise. The sight horrified him. Stephanie, hands on her stomach trying to keep the blood from spilling out her body. Her breathing got faster, eyes blank and distant. There was something else going on though. A white bubble was forming around the guard who had shot her, as the bubble surrounded him, he dropped to the ground… dead. But the field didn’t stop there, I kept getting bigger. Jason rushed to grab Stephanie. Yelling at Tim to run.

Jason and Tim ran only looking back to see if they were being chased… or if there was anyone to chase them. The field had killed… Stephanie had killed all the guards, and it was slowly getting bigger. If they didn’t stop the field, it would just keep expanding killing everyone.

“Tim stop, we need to stop the field,”

Jason flipped the visor on his helmet up while he gently placed Stephanie on the floor, she was still slightly awake, hopefully she wouldn’t remember any of this when she wakes. He pushed his hands on the wound.

“Stephanie, look, I know it hurts but I need you to try to stop the field… could you do that for me,” he tried saying it in the most comforting voice he could muster, Steph was always better at the whole human interaction thing. Steph bit her lip slightly and screwed her eyes shut. Jason looked over just to see the pale bubble flicker out of existence. Leaving the corpses on the ground in perfect view.

She passed out.

One thing done.

Now to stop the bleeding.

“Tim, can you hold her down”

He looked at him with the confused expression that seems to have adopted his face. He opened his mouth to say something but closed it and decided on nodding. Smart decision.

“Got any tweezers?” Tim shook his head “…great, me neither,”

**(guys if your uncomfortable with like blood and stuff you don’t need to read it)**

Jason carefully took the bullet out.

“Put pressure on the wound,” Jason grabbed Tim’s hand covering it in Steph’s blood, and lead it over the wound.

Jason grabbed the keys from his pocket. He didn’t have anything else metal to use so he grabbed the end of the key the handle part, using his power to make the metal warmer. He continued until it was glowing. Carefully he placed the red metal on Steph’s skin, in a shitty attempt to cauterize the wound, when the bleeding stopped Jason, grabbed the key, turning it back to room temperature. 

**(and the bloody bit is over)**

“I don’t have any bandages, but I think I know a place we can go,”

Jason picked Stephanie up and they made their way out of the building.

The second they left the building Jason took a breath of fresh polluted Gotham city air. He did a quick scan of their surroundings. It was dark out so he couldn’t see much but he could already tell the first lights of dawn weren’t far away.

Jason set off down an alley way occasionally turning, looking around and going in a different direction.

“Where are we going?” this was the first time Tim had spoken in a while, and to be honest Jason wasn’t exactly expecting it.

“Crime alley,”

His eyes widened in shock.

“Don’t worry kid, I used to live there, if its still standing we can probably stay in my old place,”

Tim didn’t relax but he didn’t stop following Jason.

Eventually he got to an old fire escape, and started climbing up, Stephanie still in his arms.

“Be careful,” Tim’s voice was small but filled with concern, whether it was for Steph or Jason he couldn’t tell.

“I’ve been carrying stolen tires up here since I could walk… she’ll be fine,”

Tim cautiously followed Jason up the fire escape, holding on tight enough to turn his knuckles white.

Jason climbed through the window and set Steph down on the bed.

As Tim made his way into the room, he fist noticed the dust covering the room, it was dark and the apartment probably hadn’t been used in years, but no matter how shitty it was by actually having a roof it was already better than the streets.

Jason got up the leave the room, Tim stood up and followed.

“We should get her to a hospital,”

“I got bandages here,”

“But she-”

“Look kid, she goes to a hospital and they send her right back to the person who sold her, you go back to what ever you were doing before yesterday and I go into foster care, none of our options sound good but at least with this I get to stay with the closest thing I have to family!”

He hadn’t meant to yell but there was something about this kid getting on his nerves.

Tim took a step back while Jason looked through the abandoned kitchen for some bandages.

“What are you doing here,”

Jason turned spun around, ready to fight. He left his baseball bat in the trafficking ring but there was one of his old tire irons laying on the ground. He tapped his foot on the ground, using his power to fling the iron into his hand. He held it in front of him ready to hit who ever he needed to.

He expected some kind of thug or squatter or something, but instead he found two kids.

Granted they both had swords in their hands, and they defiantly looked like they could use them.

“Who are you and what are you doing in our house,”

“Hate to break it to ya, short stack but this ain’t your place,”

The kid glared.

“My names Jason and until about three years ago, I lived here,”

The kid’s glare dissipated and his face relaxed, but he still held his sword in front of him ready for battle, the other kid lowered her sword.

“It seems we’re at an impasse, me and Cass live here now,”

“Not anymore,”

Jason was pissed and Tim could tell this was going to end in a fight.

“Okay how about we compromise, I’m sure we can work something out, but for now we need some bandages… our friend was shot,”

The kids looked at each other for a minute before Cass got some bandages from her bag.

Jason lead her into the room they came in through.

Steph lay on the bed, she looked calm, as though she was just sleeping. Sleeping with a fucking hole in her stomach.

It was sick.

Some people thought they had the right to ruin other peoples lives for a profit. They’d hurt and kill anyone who strayed from their ideas of perfection, and kidnap kids because they want to use them. it was sick, I tore people’s lives apart, some people have been stuck there so long they didn’t know what sunlight looked like. Jason would forever hate anyone who messed with kids. Especially metas.

Cass started to try and wrap the bandages around Steph, but Jason reached out to try and do it himself. He didn’t exactly trust this kid.

_Don’t worry I can do this._

Jason was staring right in her face, but her lips didn’t move. Where the fuck was the voice coming from.

_I’m a telepath… we’re both metas as well._

“Why should I trust you?” he would say that he didn’t intend for it to be so passive aggressive but he’d be lying 

Some mental images surfaced in his brain. Images of blood, being hurt and having to learn how to fix yourself. The though made Jason sick.

Jason backed off, watch as practiced hands bandaged the badly cauterized wound.

_She should be fine. The bullet didn’t hit anything vital, and the cauterization stopped the bleeding so there’s no chance of her bleeding out._

Jason let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Cass stood up and left the room just as Tim entered.

“Is she…?”

“Yeah… she’ll be fine,”

Tim let out a sigh of relief

“We came to an agreement,”

“And what was that,”

“Your gonna have to get used to living with them,”

“Cass doesn’t seem too bad,”

“You obviously haven’t met Damian,” Tim muttered it under his breath and to be honest it was the first time Tim had said something bad about someone… or really anything that wasn’t a question. For someone who was kidnapped, jailed, escaped, shot at, and found out they were a meta… he was taking it surprisingly well, defiantly better than Jason took it.

Jason gave a little laugh, not taking his eyes off Steph sleeping form.

Jason leaned against the bed and grabbed a book from under the bed, Tim moving to lean next to him, in front of him the bedroom door was open giving them a perfect view of Damian and Cass.

“Get some sleep… I’ll keep watch,”

Tim didn’t move instead, he looked over at the book in Jason’s hands. If the kid didn’t sleep, that wasn’t Jason’s problem. He opened the book and started reading.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> link for cass' power
> 
> https://powerlisting.fandom.com/wiki/Telepathy


End file.
